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Comment by HappySweeney | Hacker News Reader

Didn't they say the same thing to Australia when they tabled their version of this bill? And then did not Facebook cave? How is this statement at all credible in light of this?

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From the first paragraph:

> the experience in Australia was that [Facebook's] removal [of news link sharing] had little impact on user engagement.

Serves me right for commenting on the headline alone.

But it did have a major impact on the traffic of those sites.

Good or bad?

Yes, Facebook restored news content in Australia. Dropping news content was a negotiating tactic:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56165015

And Facebook knowingly and grubbily caused extra chaos as part of their effort to get their way:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-deliberately-caused-ha...

> And Facebook knowingly and grubbily caused extra chaos as part of their effort to get their way

There is exceptionally little merit to this claim. They blocked links news outlets that would have subjected them to the link tax, and this block wasn't perfect. There was nothing to indicate that blocking sites that wouldn't have incurred the link tax was deliberate.

They also blocked NGOs and some gov agencies people were relying on to get critical alerts.

It was a super shady move and some think it was intentional.

Their filter for blocking sites subject to the link tax caught some NGOs and government agencies, there was zero evidence that this was intentional. "Some think X happened" is a vastly weaker claim. Some think the earth is flat. Some think the 2020 election was stolen.

*WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who was a vocal proponent of the bill[1][2]

[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/22287971/australia-facebook-news-... [2] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/media-bargaining-cod...

For clarity, Murdoch was a proponent of the bill because the bill forced Google and Facebook to pay Murdoch for links. The Australian government literally wrote a bill that forced money to be paid to a media tycoon. Incredible, but true.

If you're not Australian, this is completely unsurprising.

Murdoch owns 2/3rds of all news media here. His headlines ensured the centre-right election victory in 2011 which was terrible for many reasons.

That government then cancelled our already in-progress national fibre broadband rollout in favour of inferior VDSL2, because (at the time) higher bandwidth was seen as a threat to cable TV. This was a multi-billion dollar waste of taxpayer money, and we now have the ~70th worst internet in the world for the ~10th highest price.

Have a guess who owns the cable TV networks.

> Murdoch owns 2/3rds of all news media here. His headlines ensured the centre-right election victory in 2011 which was terrible for many reasons.

So then his headlines also ensured the centre-left election victory in 2022. Was that also terrible for many reasons?

> Have a guess who owns the cable TV networks.

Are you genuinely trying to make the claim that pay TV providers like Netflix and Disney Plus and friends don't work in Australia when they plainly do and have done for a long time? VDSL2 was always capable of it.

As conspiracy theories go I think your one needs some revising.

ITT: LNP shills think 50Mbps internet is good

Pretty weak, kid. Admit to yourself that your conspiratorial thinking is irrational, straightforwardly dumb, and unsupported by the practical realities. You'll feel better.

Why is that incredible? It sounds like simple crony capitalism, and we all know that’s alive and well.

Crony capitalism is one thing, but I think it's unheard of for the federal government of a Developed country to write and pass a bill that requires Google and Facebook to pay money directly to the monopoly media company in that country.

Note: The law only applies to Google and Facebook, and only requires money to be paid directly to NewsCorp (not other media outlets that might be "impacted"). The federal government is now writing laws to collect money for a private company.

That's pretty blatant.

And Facebook was a vocal opponent of the bill, but you're happy to believe them?

The bill is straightforward and mandates paying for simply linking to a website. It's completely absurd. Facebook was in the right here, if you have any value for an open internet and free flow of information.

You're choosing who to believe based on what, max outrage?

You're choosing who to believe based on what, a single source with a direct conflict of interest?

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